ways2work > How to do it > Re-thinking business travel > Using ICT to reduce business travel
Using ICT to reduce business travel
Here we show you when and how national and international business travel can be avoided by using communication tools. By describing what the tool options are and what they do, we hope to encourage you to re-think business travel, especially long-distance travel.
We are not, however, arguing that you should never travel on business. There are good reasons for business travel, especially in the early stages of acquiring customers, and acquiring customers is good for an organisation and good for UK plc.
Our aim is not that you do not travel on business, but to help you make a better-informed choice about when travel is necessary. So you can save your organisation money, time and disruption. And as you do what's good for your organisation and its people, you will be doing good for the environment.
Although at first glance they may seem similar, the topics here are different to those concerning teleworking (working at home using ICT)
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While you can avoid travel to work by teleworking, here we talk about avoiding travel for work
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Much of the material covered here comes from the study of virtual teaming which is about collaborating at a distance rather than working at home
There are however two similarities between not travelling to work and not travelling for work.
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First, experience of teleworking leads people to question the need to travel on business
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Second, the ICT-based communication tools used for teleworking are the same as those used to avoid business travel, and a big part of this part of the site is a review of those tools
The topics we cover on other pages about alternatives to business travel are: